72 Votes (so far!) Separate Maggie Trevor from 54th District Seat

Maggie Trevor, Democratic candidate for the Illinois House 54th District, is short only 72 votes a week and a half after the election. This is such a cliff-hanger!

At the end of the day Nov. 16, Morrison was leading 50.08 to Maggie's 49.92 percent. Still, the post office continues to deliver mail-in ballots to the Cook County Clerk's offices on Washington Street downtown. The ballot counting will continue until the end of the day on Tuesday, Nov. 20.

On Thursday when I observed, most of the work consisted of checking to make sure the mail-in ballots were dated Nov. 5 or before, and transcribing votes onto scannable ballots. Many of the mail-in ballots had been completed on downloaded forms that were printed on letter-sized paper. The employees of the County Clerk's office painstakingly transcribed these ballots onto the larger ballot forms that could be fed into the electronic scanners. To do this, the workers divided into pairs: one person slowly and clearly read out the line number or candidate's name while the other person filled in a ballot with a special neon-blue marker. So far, the County Clerk's staff has processed 150,000 mail-in ballots for all of Cook County. It was humbling to watch the process and stand witness to democracy in action. That sounds pretty sappy, but it was as moving as it was mundane. Especially since this process happens every single election--we're just paying more attention this time.

Every vote is counted in every single election. Every time. This is what democracy looks like.